


What Curiosity Brings

by BleuMorpho



Series: Of Wars and Dragons [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Dragons, Established Relationship, Fluff, Like very minor, M/M, some minor angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9455432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleuMorpho/pseuds/BleuMorpho
Summary: It was Newt, of that Credence was absolutely positive, and yet the Hufflepuff was nowhere to be found.





	

Inspired by [this](http://thegreencarousel.tumblr.com/post/155518434829/i-kept-reading-fanfics-about-newt-fighting-in-the) lovely piece of fan art by [@thegreencarousel](http://thegreencarousel.tumblr.com/) and the many posts of Crewt Auntie [@linddzz](http://linddzz.tumblr.com/)

 

* * *

  

Credence knew that snooping through another’s belongings was wrong. Snooping was the result of too much curiosity, and curiosity came from the Devil’s whispers. Curiosity drove even the purest souls to sin. Snooping led to belts, punishments and pain.

 

Snooping led to finding wands under beds and Mother screaming as she flew across the church rafters.

 

So it was certainly not out of curiosity that Credence rifled through the bottommost drawer in the desk that Newt had so long ago pushed into the corner of his shed. He had run out of ink and hadn’t been able to find another inkwell in the chaotic debris of parchment and seeds and vials that Newt called his workspace. Of course, without more ink, he could not finish his task of deciphering and editing Newt’s notes into something comprehensive and grammatically correct. And so, not wanting to aimlessly wander the suitcase in search of his energetic lover— _oh_ , and how Credence’s neck flushed warm and red at the very thought of that new development, indeed—he had begun to pull out drawers and shuffle their contents around with soft nudges of his fingertips.

 

Curiosity did not make him open the bottommost drawer in the desk, but before he could recognize the signs of its arrival within his mind, his eyes had caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of the drawer behind a thick brown folder. At first he jumped, afraid he had stumbled across one of the tinier creatures calling the suitcase home. Very quickly, however, did he realize it was something else entirely.

 

And that was when the curiosity struck.

 

Curiosity brought his hand forward. Curiosity folded his fingers around the brown folder and pulled it into the light. Curiosity possessed his mind and drove out any thoughts of privacy, of punishment or sin. Curiosity, so innocent and silent, made him open the folder and stare at the photograph laying at the edge among fading yellow pages covered in scrawling, glistening calligraphy.

 

Credence was not unfamiliar to magical photographs anymore. The old textbooks Newt loaned him when the Obscurus had finally settled back into his bones and magic had become something less mysterious were full of them. He had seen plenty of smiling portraits of influential wizards and sketches of bubbling cauldrons with black ink spilling over their rims, but this...this was...

 

A cold breath slithered from his lips as he pushed a loose cascade of dark tresses up to one side of his head in an absentminded gesture of unease.

 

This was all wrong.

 

It was Newt, of that Credence was absolutely positive, and yet the Hufflepuff was nowhere to be found.

 

Gone was the confident, determined posture that came from being around his charges, and there was no sign of the playful smirk that appeared when the wizard was being particularly badgering and teasing to those he trusted most. The young man in the photograph held a dark jacket over his shoulders, more like a security blanket than a cloak, his ginger hair cut short and his eyes shadowed and dark from a clear lack of sleep. His cheekbones were sharper, his freckles less pronounced, and despite his youth, there seemed to be a stifling weight upon his posture that Credence could never imagine his current companion suffering through today.

 

The younger Newt wore a dust brown uniform with simple braid and buttons, a multitude of restraining belts and pouches wrapped around his waist, hips, and chest. He stared at Credence for only a few seconds, each one painful and pleading for some unknown torment to end, before quickly shifting away to the floor. Even this familiar lack of eye contact felt off, as though this young wizard was afraid of being both praised and rejected for his very existence.

 

The Newt that woke Credence every morning with a gentle hand on his arm and a kiss upon his lips was not fond of maintaining eye contact with humans, either, but never did he attempt to apologize for himself in any way, shape, or form. His Newt remained, in all circumstances and weather, a wild, fantastic beast all his own. This young soldier, this innocent boy, practically screamed guilt and despair with every shift of his slowly hunching body.

 

The Obscurial found it all a bit too familiar.

 

“Credence?”

 

“Ah!” Credence clutched the folder to his chest, blinking rapidly in the sudden onslaught of awareness that he had been crouching on the floor of the shed for quite a while now. The shadows that stretched up the walls had grown higher, darker, as the sun at the height of the suitcase began to fade into a dusky orange. “I’m sorry!”

 

Credence turned his head and peeked up between the curls that had fallen back over his shoulders, watching as Newt tilted his head to the side and smiled.

 

“What on earth are you doing down there?” He asked, ignoring Credence’s automatic apologies with the same amount of concern he had never given them to begin with. “Drop something?”

 

“...no...no, I-uh…” Credence loosened his grip on the folder pressed to his chest, and only then did Newt seem to realize that it was there. Subtly, so much so that anyone who didn’t know the Magizoologist extremely well would have never noticed, his expression froze. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Credence watched as Newt’s lips grew tighter, his eyes grew darker, and his shoulders pushed back as though bracing for a standoff with a wild, stampeding Graphorn. His smile stayed in place, plastered and false, as though he were determined to push his worries out of his mind through sheer force of fragile optimism.

 

Had Credence been physically capable of hating any part of Newt, that fake smile would have been at the top of his list.

 

“I’m sorry. I was looking for more ink. I didn’t...” He whispered, forcing his gaze to settle on a spot of mud that had managed to find itself stuck to Newt’s white collar. He had been with Newt long enough to know that no beatings or scathing remarks would follow his confession, but the silent fear of being cast aside still thrummed through his veins with every shaking breath he took. “I saw the picture move, and I wanted to see what it was.”

 

“...Hmm, you found the picture of me and my brother, then?” Credence winced at the slight strain in Newt’s falsely cheerful voice before glancing down at the photograph in confusion.

 

“You have a brother?” He had been so focused on the faded depiction of Newt that he had completely overlooked the taller uniformed man standing at his side. Now that he looked closely, however, he realized that besides the light sprinkling of freckles across their cheeks and a similarly chiseled jawline, he never would have known that the two men were related.

 

Where Newt had shuffled uncomfortably in his own skin with a frown, his brother stood tall and straight. His eyes were hard and cold, though not unkind, as he stared back at Credence’s curious expression. His hair was darker, straighter, and slightly styled to lie flat along the top of his head in a futile attempt at self-control. A dark wand rested lightly in his right hand, though Credence had no doubt that that same grip could become unyielding and proficient in a manner of moments at the first sign of trouble. As the image of Newt shifted his gaze downward, the elder Scamander raised his chin as though silently attempting to compensate for his sibling’s shortcomings.

 

Credence decided that he disliked him immensely.  

 

“Yes. Theseus, he’s older than me. He’d already been in the war for almost a year before I joined the DRRB on the Eastern Front.” Newt groaned as he bent down to join Credence on the floor, folding his legs beneath him as he leaned over the open folder. “This was taken before we went our separate ways, about two weeks after I started training. My mother insisted.”

 

“ _Durb_?” Credence asked incredulously. 

 

“Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau.” Newt chuckled, his eyes never shifting from the photograph of his past. “I don’t think anyone was surprised. Theseus wasn’t, at least, he made that quite clear.”

 

“He looks…” Credence bit his tongue, not wishing to offend the older man more than he already had with his violation of privacy. Damn his curiosity.

 

“Intimidating? Brave? Dashingly handsome?” With each description, Newt’s voice dropped slightly in a strange mix of bitterness and resignation that did not sit right with Credence at all.

 

“Bossy.” Credence felt Newt’s head snap up, and just before the Obscurial could open his mouth to apologize once more, a high pitched wheezing followed by a short, deep snort echoed through the room. Credence looked up from the photograph to see Newt’s fist hovering in the air below his chin, as though he wished to politely cover his snickering mouth but was powerless to do so. His eyes crinkled in mirth, and the cold squeezing in Credence’s gut loosened ever so slowly.

 

 “Oh, you are wonderful,” Newt wheezed. “That, yes, he was definitely bossy. But, I suppose, he wasn’t the worst as siblings go.”

 

 Credence felt his cheeks heating at the compliment and quickly glanced back down at the folder now sitting in his lap, pushing the photograph to the side and skimming the pages behind it. There were a few newspaper clippings detailing the gritty horrors of different warzones, with black and white landscapes devoid of any life littering the sides of bleak texts. Behind the clippings where thick pages of what appeared to be early versions of Newt’s field notes, all concerning different breeds of dragons. Rough sketches of claws, wings, and snouts were splashed here or there with charts and uneven paragraphs, and Credence could not help but smile.

 

 “Did you like working with them? The dragons?” He asked, pulling out a fully detailed drawing of what was labeled as a “Ukrainian Ironbelly”. The beast had an impressive wingspan, its body arching upwards in a proud stance that showed off the detail sketched in the scales running up the dragon’s side. Deep red eyes stared at an invisible opponent, its jaws unhinged as though about to release a jet of flame into the air.

 

 “…for the most part. They really are the most beautiful beings, if you treat them well.” Newt reached up and gently took the drawing out of Credence’s hand, scrutinizing his past work with a hint of a smile and a soft sniff. “Not easy to do when you’re forced to ride them into battle, let me tell you.”

 

Credence tried to imagine it, tried to picture Newt’s young freckled face twisted in fear and determination as he held onto the horns of his beloved beasts, with dark clouds crashing down upon them en masse. Just as the image began to fully form, and just as the cloud began to morph into something so much more personal and violent, he banished it forcefully with a shake of his head. The last thing he wanted or needed was to think of Newt screaming and falling…or worse…

 

Newt must have noticed his mouth twist in despair at his morbid thoughts, because the next thing Credence knew, there was a gentle hand in his hair rubbing at his scalp in soothing circles.

 

“Hey,” Newt murmured in his ear, “none of that, now. I’m right here. It’s alright. It was a long time ago.” 

 

Credence forced himself to nod. After a brief hesitation, he placed the folder onto the ground and folded his body into Newt’s calming embrace. They sat like that together, lost in memories and daydreams alike as the sounds of the worlds beyond the doorway filtered in and out of the tiny shed. Credence glanced at the old sketch of the Ukrainian Ironbelly still resting in Newt’s hand, admiring how far they had both come in so short a time, together and apart.

 

“…well, some things haven’t changed, at least.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“I still can’t read your handwriting very well.”

 

“My handwriting is perfectly legible, thank you! It’s not my fault you Americans just use chickenscratch and be done with it!” 

 


End file.
